NPR’s
Science Friday used to Justify the Plunder of Iraq’s Power Grid
Letter to NPR, followed by its response

Date : 2/10/2006 5:05:39 PM

I was deeply saddened and disappointed to hear
Science Friday today, which is normally a very interesting and objective
program, used as a vehicle for promoting some pretty monstrous distortions
and falsehoods about the US occupation of Iraq. Your guest, who was embedded
with US contractors there, was supposedly commenting on the difficulty
of rebuilding Iraq's power generation capacity. What we got was a long
series of excuses for the occupation's failure, and no truth about the
real role of the people with whom he was embedded.

I have written quite a bit about elecctrical power
generation and deregulation in Mexico and California, so I'm not ignorant
about the industry. I've also been to Iraq twice myself, not embedded
with either the US military or corporate contractors, and I've spoken
with power generation workers, as well as other ordinary Iraqi working
people.

Your guest was never asked for the names of the
corporations with whom he was travelling. That was an unpardonable failure
by your host, as it would have revealed the bias of your guest and his
corporate supporters.

Iraq's power generation workers, and their unions
in Basra and Baghdad, have been opposed from the beginning of the occupation
to the efforts by US corporations like Bechtel and KBR/Halliburton to
bring in people to do their jobs. Remember, Iraq has a well-trained workforce,
from operators to engineers and managers, who are very familiar with their
own power generation system. They go to work every day, without the heavy
mercenary bodyguards described by your guest, and are the real people
who keep the system running. Iraqi unions (unmentioned by your guest)
have struck over the efforts by US contractors to replace them and take
over their work. In the oil industry and the ports, they have even forced
some foreign companies, like KBR, Stevedoring Services of America, and
the Danish Maersk shipping giant, to relinquish their Iraqi concessions.
When I was in Basra last May, Hashimia Mohsin Hussein, the first woman
to head a national union in Iraq, was threatening to shut down power stations
in the south to stop contractors like the ones who hosted your guest,
from replacing Iraqi workers.

Your guest talked about the disastrous decision
to build combustion turbine instead of steam turbine plants, but doesn't
explain why the Coalition Authority decided to do waste billions of dollars
on this terrible mistake. The corporations who entered Iraq in the wake
of the invasion made that decision -- without consulting the Iraqis, who
would have told them, and tried to, that they needed to rebuild the existing
steam generation plants injured in the war. Instead, those corpoations
brought in combustion turbine plants because they made a great deal of
money selling them to Iraq, for far more than they would have if they
had simply repaired the existing plants, or helped Iraqis build new ones
based on the existing technology they already had.

That all would have been bad enough, had we simply
paid for this corruption from the $18 billion Congress appropriated at
the occupation's start for reconstruction. But as we've learned now from
numerous press accounts, that money was never spent. Instead, Bremer and
the Coalition Authority seized Iraq's oil income, desperately needed for
raising the standard of living of its people, and used it to pay for these
corrupt contracts. Iraq's oil wealth was simply stolen to pay the contractors
with whom your guest was embedded -- for power plants that were and are
inoperable. Your guest didn't mention that either, and your host didn't
ask. No wonder the Iraqis don't like us much.

Then your guest announced that the reason for the
power shortages plaguing Iraq since the start of the occupation is that
Iraqi's are better off now, buying loads of consumer electronics which
drain the grid. This is a ridiculous claim, and any unembedded journalist
who talked to ordinary Iraqis would know the truth. Unemployment in Iraq
is still over 50%, far greater than in Saddam's time. The former subsidies
for necessities for the great majority of the people have been cut. The
standard of living for most Iraqi's has plummeted. Your guest, embedded
with rich contractors in the Green Zone, was too blind or unconcerned
to see.

Your guest's solution -- to privatize the Iraqi
power system -- just happens to be the economic reform pushed by the occupation
authorities and the big contractors. This is just one more giveaway of
Iraq's national assets to foreign corporations, using the armed might
of the occupation to keep Iraqis from resisting. Every union I spoke with
there was totally opposed to these privatization schemes. Even the manager
of the Baghdad oil refinery told me that these privatizations would force
him to lay off half the plant's workers, condemning them to hunger, unemployment
and worse. And for the benefit of whom? Those same contractors with whom
your guest was embedded.

This is not science. Science Friday was used to
defend a deeply unpopular policy (both here and in Iraq), and allowed
uncontested falsehoods and distortions to back up this dubious and self-interested
endeavor. Using the program for this purpose is a travesty.

I suggest that TOTN air another program which examines
truthfully the role of contractors and workers in Iraq.

Thanks for your attention.

David
Bacon

Dear
David,

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